How I Got my Family Out of China

if you guys watched my previous video how I escaped China I told the story of how I in fact escaped China fairly unscathed even though I had certain government forces looking for me if you haven't watched that video I recommend you check that one out first now that video that you guys watched was filmed about three days after I had escaped in mainland China and I was kind of a refugee in Hong Kong nowadays I would be nabbed with in Hong Kong as well but even back then Hong Kong was not a super super safe place to be if you're a dissident yes there are many religious dissident groups in Hong Kong based out of Hong Kong but at the time there were still instances of people getting kidnapped back into mainland China to face trial in the Chinese court system that has a 99% conviction rate China is no stranger to this thuggery kind of dastardly government tactics to get people to make force apologies and sentence them within their own borders even if they commit crimes within Hong Kong supposedly a free territory so I was still pretty on edge even being in Hong Kong and I made sure never to stay in the same place for more than a couple days now if you guys have been to Hong Kong you'll know that it is one of the most expensive places to travel /live so staying in a hotel there is insanely expensive and I didn't have the money to you know put myself up in nice hotel so what I would do is find these tiny disgusting hole in the walls like you know 50 floors up in some of these buildings in some of the more greasy downtown kind of scummy districts of Hong Kong Hong Kong is full of glitz and glamor and it's quite it's quite a beautiful city in fact one of the most beautiful cities in the world but it's not any different than some areas that you might find in Manhattan that are kind of greasy and shady as well so I was frequently neighbours to illegal immigrants prostitutes low-level criminals really staying in these places that would often cost $50 a night which in Hong Kong is incredibly cheap most of the time I wouldn't have a window I would have to put up with loud noises from you know people fighting and throwing bottles and all kinds of crazy crazy stuff but it was very very rough laughing hop around a lot of these different places and packing up my bags and going to hide out in a different place and while I sorted this out now while I was hiding in these places for about a month I was contacting people that confirmed that yes there were certain government forces looking for me it didn't make me like the most wanted man in China but what happened was somebody needed to answer for the fact that I was flying a drone the fact that there was collaboration between these government branches to try to get me whether they are going to deport me or try me for something somebody needed to deal with me and I am of the opinion today you know based on the people that I actually talked to within the Chinese government that's I was kind of let going away in that if I managed to avoid you know confrontation or direct contact with these government branches then I would be let out and if I came back then they would deal with me I didn't have like an exit ban per se but there were government branches that wanted to at least talk to me about what the hell was going on that being said when my wife told me to basically get the hell out and truck will try to deal with this as soon as possible I always incredibly stressed out because my wife actually was in the middle of her green card application to come to the US now we weren't planning on moving necessarily but we wanted to you know get her green card so that some day in the future we could decide if we wanted to move if things you know got bad if within China there were vibes there was writing on the wall it was not a good place to be a an American foreigner in particular especially one that makes videos online and published documentaries without a journalist license more or less now after I had that scare at the border where they knew me by my Chinese name ma which is you know actually just one piece of the the three characters in on my Chinese driver's license I knew that potentially my wife and daughter might have an issue getting out as well however what she did was she ended up staying with some distant relatives she would hop around with relatives that were not super close to her and she left our apartment that we bought that was in her name and in fact the building manager called many times to tell her that the police were looking for me not necessarily her we're looking specifically for me they had pinpointed where I was now there's a lot of talk about like oh if the Chinese authorities were actually looking for you huh you know you have to register where you live as a foreigner so that the Public Security Bureau can know every movement that you have and where you're located the thing is both me and many other foreigners have played the system a little bit differently to avoid any potential confrontation I actually never registered my new apartment at the PSB my the PSB knew my previous apartment where I lived and that's where they actually contacted me multiple times to check my passport and harass me about what I'm doing filming but when I bought my new apartment it was actually in my wife's name and I never went to the PSB to register my registration was still at the University so that's why the police were looking for me with a photograph around the fore-end frequented bars and things like that because they actually just couldn't find me where I was supposed to be registered now because I told my wife about this she knew to stay with some distant family members and kind of hop around herself until eventually her documents and her green card finally finally arrived in the post so she had to go get those verified at some sort of office and she also we had already had an exit permit ready for my daughter she was already an American citizen so in China if you're an American citizen like a child born in China you have to have like an exit permit that allows you to leave in the mean time we knew that the longer we waited after she got her green card and stuff the more dangerous this could potentially be because if they do want to come after your family which they often do they'll either exit venue or they can take custody of your child it's scary scary stuff so my heart was pounding and I was like basically in tears every day when I was video calling them from these like hovels these disgusting graffiti greasy hovels talking to my family who've missed me dearly I miss them so much and I was just so worried I needed them to get out so I had actually had a couple friends Winston you know Winston from serpens a day I was a huge integral part as was prawn history and check him out they were two of my best buddies they helped me out in this situation they helped call him down my wife and call me down and they also helped organize trips to get luggage and stuff to the border where they would be able to like hop over with all their stuff they helped us move more or less I think in the day where my wife and my daughter were gonna try to cross the border now they across a different border than I did but it was still into Hong Kong and when they went through she was questioned but it was just a knock us questions like why you leaving when he gonna come back bla bla bla and they got through and I'll tell you what we didn't decide to meet and have dinner or lunch or anything in Hong Kong we literally just went straight to the airport and that's where the first time I saw them in about a month I just ran to my daughter just spun her around in circles and kiss my wife and I just couldn't believe how much I miss them and we were pretty much ready to board the next flight that we could to New York City we still had to go through eggs immigration which still made me nervous in Hong Kong and my wife they make sure when you have a child that you know your child's name so it's not like a kidnapping or something and she forgot my daughter's name and the border guard is like what's wrong with you I was like what's wrong with you you don't even know our daughters name but she was obviously flustered and freaking out but we got on that flight and I usually hate the flight between Hong Kong New York City it's very long and especially when you have a child like a whiny little child but let me tell you I savored every minute after that take off like I was I didn't sleep at all I was so excited that we hadn't managed to get out as was my wife and obviously my daughter didn't understand that the situation but when we touched down and went to the dreaded customs area where you have to go through and it when you have to enter immigration through JFK Airport I've never been so happy to see my own country I'll tell you that my wife felt the same way and there were my parents to pick us up and bring us back to a semblance of freedom where we can decompress and kind of figure this out now over time we've been in contact with a lot of people and it was confirmed that's they were definitely looking for me the way things work in China is if you don't confront something directly then you probably don't have too much to worry about but when things go too far when you actually have the responsibility of dealing with something directly then things happen so in China there's a huge gray area that's why people get away with so much stuff there but when they get mad enough and somebody give someone an order then stuff gets done and that's why I was the target of that so people are curious as to why this didn't happen to some other people that were doing similar things to me it's because in my local area there was a directive there's shuffles in the party all the time were people jockey for position and I was a very easy target because I was one of the few foreigners in this very small city as opposed to one of you know thousands and thousands in a place like Shanghai so I was not a drop in the bucket I was the buckets in this area and unfortunately that meant I was the one to get plucked there is no system of law there's no rule of law in China so when they decide they want to do something they'll do it and it's not something you can fight in court look at my friend he's in political prison he literally ran a tour company he went to jail shortly after I left and I would have been him I would have been him my family would probably never see me again just as I probably will never see my friend Michael ever again for the rest of my life so it goes to show you when there's a target on your back in China as a foreigner there's no recourse you you have to go and you have to find a way to get on you have to pray that they're not gonna exit venue and I got really really lucky that things didn't progress that level but when we talk to people that exit Van absolutely would have happened if I had continued to stay and there was more and more of a case built up against me in the case being that they wanted to try me for espionage more or less not tied to any government organization but espionage in that like they found me annoying that I spoke the truth about China the fact that I would get footage of people and you know travel around the country show the good and the bad you know and I maintain to this day that I've convinced more people that China is a good country full of good people then making people think it's a bad place but after this kind of absolute nonsense when I get searched and Tara gated by SWAT team when on my travels and all of my stuff checked my footage checked and harassed and handcuffed and all this kind of stuff just for traveling around the country then you know you're in a place that is not mature enough to be on the world stage and it's not a place that you want to be a martyr for however I maintain to this day that the Chinese friends and family that I have the people I so deeply care about I want a better future for them too I want a better China for them I don't want the country that I love to turn into an absolute shutdown totalitarian state where your thoughts and actions are controlled but unfortunately that's pretty much what's happening now so to conclude my family and I are very happy living in the u.s. we continue to travel until you know this whole thing happened where people can't really move around anymore but uh life's good life's happy and I'm I'm happy that maybe I could make some change and I hope people that question their freedom in their countries understand that immigrants like my wife and returnees like myself appreciate the freedom and systems of justice so much more than we did about ten years ago when I left to go to China it's really if you live in a Western democracy you have no idea how lucky you are and I wish more and more people would understand that instead of being spoiled and not participating in these systems because it's easier to be told what to do and what to think that is not the future I want for my daughter and it's not the future I want for anyone in this world you

Channel: laowhy86

Views: 512,546

Rating: 4.8535991 out of 5

Keywords: china, hong kong, hong kong news, national security law, carrie lam, chinese government, escape, run away, ran away from china, escaping china, chinese communist party, ccp, laowhy86 leave china, laowhy86, advchina, adv china, leaving china, leave china, advpodcasts, advpodcast, serpentza, winston sterzel, cmilk, canada china, detained in china, mainland china, hong kong law, hong kong security law, prc, hong kong china, china hong kong, hong kong 2020, 中国, china jail, china prison

Id: JZpV-KFH2pQ

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020

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[u/ChaosPredator]

I really love the content put out by laowhy and serpentza. I used to watch them since 5 years ago. And it's quite interesting to see how China turned more and more authoritarian over the past few years.